Monday, April 26, 2010

If you're a reality TV or '80s metal fan, you probably know that Bret Michaels had a brain hemorrhage last week and is currently in critical condition at an undisclosed hospital. The Poison frontman/Rock of Love star/Celebrity Apprentice contestant has his people posting updates on Facebook, where tens of thousands of fans have gathered to show their support for Michaels. Mostly, they're hitting the "like" button on positive news and leaving encouraging comments about his recovery. But a lot of them are also praying out loud, on Facebook -- a relatively new occurrence in the digital world. A sampling of the prayers being posted for Bret:

May God watch over you once again as He has several times.Bret my thoughts and PRAYERS are going out to you,Please Lord help This amazing Kind Wonderful Soul of a Human Being Heal Quickly and Completly,He is a wonderful source of inspiration to many,This world Needs more People like Bret Michaels in it,Keep him Safe and Please Lord Help him Heal,God Bless you Bret Michaels,I prayer for you Everyday,Bret we all love you,God Speed to your retuning Health,Love you Bret.

I pray for you Bret, I pray that you have a full recovery and the angels protect you always. Rest and the angels will heal you. I'm not a religious person, but I owe you.... your music and you have pulled me through some tough times. So now I will pray for you in your time of need.

LORD, I PRAY FOR A HEALING FOR BRET AND HIS FRIENDS AND FAMILY.AND, I AM CALLING UPON THE ANGELS TO ASSIST IN THIS AS WELL.THIS MAN IS IMPORTANT TO THIS WORLD IN WAYS THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE NOT. WE NEED HIS TALENT AND KIND HEARTEDNESS TO MAKE THIS WORLD A BETTER PLACE. HE DOES SO MUCH FOR JUVENILE DIABETES AND HE ADORES CHILDREN. HIS MUSIC IS SO FULL OF ENERGY AND HE BELIEVES IN HIMSELF AND HIS LIFE MEMBERS. LIFT HIM UP IN HEALTH SO THE WORLD THAT LOVES HIM CAN BE WHOLE AGAIN? AMEN

May the blood of Jesus cover you bret micheals and shield u from all harm. May the angels guard you and protect you, and i pray your surgeons and physicians and specialists all have supernatural gift and knowlegde to heal you. I beg our Father to stop the bleeding to seal shut the damage vessle or vessles and to protect your brain from all harm so... See More that you have a full recovery. May u awake with a powerful testimony for God. Thankyou Jesus, Thankyou our Father, I love you God. In Jesus Name Amen.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

With the premiere of the next Twilight film only SLIGHTLY MORE THAN TWO MONTHS AWAY OMG, God Spam's thoughts turn to devout Mormons with vampire fetishes. Prior to 2005, such Mormons lived in the shadows, secretly writing G-rated fan fiction on their home PCs. Then one of them got a publishing deal, and now the words "Mormon" and "vampire" appear in the same sentence together more often than not. (It's true. Google it.)

While the feminist in me is wary of all things Twilight, I'm also a person who owns well-worn copies of both No One Knows My History and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete Series. So I do find the idea of Mormon vampire fiction pretty irresistible. The most obvious reference to Meyers' faith is leading-man vampire Edward Cullen's strict moral code; in the words of Mormon-raised blogger stoney321:

Edward ... doesn't believe in open mouth kissing, swearing, chewing tobacco, drinking caffeine, and enjoys time with his family. HE IS THE PERFECT MORMON BOY.

But stoney321 goes one step further, suggesting that Cullen is actually modeled (subconsciously by Meyer) on Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. To wit:

Every time SMeyers would write about Edward, I would just boggle. She was drawing from everything we Mormons were taught about Good Ol' Joe - he was handsome, shockingly so, he could draw you in with just his presence, let alone when he spoke, down to his freaking nose and hair color. HI THERE CREEPY AUTHOR WANTING TO BONE YOUR PROPHET.

In a less cheeky article inTouchstone Magazine, John Granger suggests that Twilight is both an analogy for Mormon conversion and a critique of Mormon culture:

Twilight is essentially an allegory of one gentile seeker’s coming to the fullness of Latter-day Saint faith and life. Bella, though, as Mrs. Meyer’s stand-in, is also a modern American woman who struggles with Edward’s patronizing misogyny and over-protectiveness. Her mind is the only one in the book not open to him, which serves both as an indication of her reverential reserve towards him as God or prophet and her resistance to being totally subject to him. Though devoted to and in love with him, she sounds notes throughout the series that reflect something like feminism.

I suspect Granger is giving Meyer too much credit here, but the books definitely seem rooted in traditional Mormon family values, as Samira K. Mehta discusses over at Religion Dispatches.

So if vampires and Latter-day Saints are one and the same, what does that mean for the world as we know it? Joseph Laycock, author of the definitive vampire religion book Vampires Today, thinks that it's bad news for bloodsuckers:

"I’m a little concerned about Twilight, because these are the most unrebellious vampires we’ve ever seen. They are essentially Mormon vampires... The vampire has gone from being a horrible monster to the kid next door. So we’ll see what happens. Perhaps Edward Cullen will be the last vampire."

Sunday, April 18, 2010

In Jesus, God was hip-deep in health care reform. It was a spiritual issue. It became a political issue. John’s gospel says that it was Lazarus talking about his short stint in the grave that finally decided authorities on plans to execute Jesus as a criminal. When a nation can’t get its healing powers working for all the people, of course its dysfunction will eventually become a political issue —- that is, a human power struggle. But it is not equally obvious that the people of a nation as sick as ours are first of all in a spiritual struggle. Our inability to do deeds of health care power is the manifest symptom, but unbelief is the real cause.

Monday, April 12, 2010

In real life, Designing Women's Dixie Carter was a conservative Republican -- but for 7 years, she played one of the most outspoken liberal Christians in TV history. Julia Sugarbaker, who managed the show's interior design business, was a devout Southern churchgoer who argued for separation of church and state, equal treatment of gay people (a cause which Carter also supported) and the ordination of women. Jezebel has some great clips of Julia speechifying on those first two topics -- but the episode that made the biggest impression on me is "How Great Thou Art" (1988), which made a passionate case for the ordination of women. I couldn't find the whole episode online, but this impressive fan site contains an episode description, historical context and guide to Biblical references. And there's one clip on YouTube: Dixie Carter singing the title hymn, below.

RIP Dixie; thank you for giving us Julia Sugarbaker. And thanks also to Linda Bloodworth-Thompson, the writer who created the character and wrote the episodes mentioned above.